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An Open Rant Against Birthday Dinners

As a kid, you
probably thought birthday parties were awesome. Your mom would invite all your
friends and find the least-creepy magician in town, and you just had to show up
and eat your ice cream cake before it melted. Too bad we all had to grow up and
start planning our own parties because somehow, the default go-to plan has
become the dreaded birthday dinner. And I know it’s a cliché to say “the
dreaded X,” but it’s not an exaggeration. People seriously dread these things. Last
week I invited a friend of mine to an event, and he was like “Uggh, I can’t. I
have to go to [person’s] fucking birthday
dinner.” I understood immediately and was oddly relieved that [person] didn’t
think of me as good enough of a friend to make the invite cut.

The fact
that birthday dinners suck shouldn’t be anything new. Take a moment and try to
remember a single time you left a BDD and thought, “Man, that was incredible. I’ve
got to do something like that for my
birthday.” NEVER. Yet when your own big day starts approaching a little too rapidly,
and the idea of coordinating some epic camping weekend seems really stressful,
but the idea of doing nothing seems really sad, you forget everything you know
and think, “Wait, what about DINNER. With
everyone! WHAT A GREAT IDEA!” It’s not a great idea. It’s the worst idea. Please
don’t. But no, you’ve already given birth to what will become a heinous group-email
thread, so here we go.

There are so
many reasons why these things are the worst for hosts and guests alike. Here
are a few. Bookmark them. Read them bimonthly and send them to your friends
preemptively. I’d love to be done with the whole concept for good, and here’s
why:

1. People are flaky.

Hi. Have you
met your friends? Planning something that relies on more than five people
arriving at the same place at a precise time is, at best, optimistic – at
worst, stupid. Tardiness aside, people straight-up BAIL. I’m more often begrudgingly
attending these things out of sympathy because I’ve gotten wind of how many
people are dropping out, and the idea is just depressing. I once went to a
surprise birthday dinner where a private room was rented out, table set for 11,
but when the birthday girl walked in, there were just four of us sitting around
one end of the huge, empty table. It was like, “Surprise! You don’t have any friends.”

2. They are always exceedingly expensive.

As soon as
you overhear some fancy pants ask the server what kind of scotches they have, you
can go ahead and mentally double what you expected to spend that night. By now
you should know that this is inevitable, and so you’re left with two options
when it comes to an ordering strategy: A) order a modest entrée and a beer in
the hopes that at least the others around you will be peer pressured into a
reasonably conservative meal (not likely); or B) embrace the fact that you will
be subsidizing a few $60 bottles of wine that, if you’re lucky, you’ll catch a
whiff of on the breath of someone in a goodbye hug, and order like it’s your
goddamn last meal on Earth. Neither is ideal, but while option A usually leaves
you poor, hungry, and resentful, with option B you’ll leave slightly more poor
but at least a little drunk.

And don’t be
fooled by a prix fixe menu; they’re actually worse because they offer an illusory
glimmer of affordability. A couple of years ago, I was one of 16 people invited to a birthday dinner.
The host had ordered a prix fixe menu and said it would be $35, which included
the tax, the tip, and cake cutting. OK, cool. I tried my best to fill up on my
“share” of the small plates and got one $9 cocktail, and when the bill came, I
pitched in $50. The host looked at me like I was crazy and said, “Uh, it’s
gonna be at least $100 a person.” Turns out all those bottles of wine and rogue
apps we’d seen bouncing around the other tables had gotten lost in the 18-inch-long
bill. Oh, and multiple people left early, throwing down $35 and blissfully forgetting
about the four drinks they’d ordered. This was pre-Venmo, and there was a pissy
mass hunt for ATMs all down the block. Paying the bill took about 40 minutes,
with the host screaming at people anytime someone tried to sneak away. Really
fond memories of that one.

3. Stagnant seating arrangements feel like an eternity.

Theoretically,
the point of these things is to celebrate with the person whose birthday it is,
and sitting around a huge table (or multiple tables) makes that impossible for
80% of the guests. If your birthday wish is to watch me chew things from afar,
I could have saved the $110 and sent you a really beautifully produced Snapchat.

Most of the
time, I end up sitting at a distance, where I could MAYBE hit the birthday
boy/girl if I fashioned the menu into a festive paper airplane, but that’s not
my idea of “quality time,” and I sadly really suck at throwing things. Since these dinners
are a worlds-colliding experience by nature, there’s a moment of light panic
when you first approach the table. You’ve got about four seconds to analyze who’s
planting themselves where and make a quick decision that has long-lasting
consequences. It’s not that I don’t want to make small talk with someone’s
random work friend for two hours; I can handle that, possibly even enjoy it.
The real risk is getting stuck between two separate worlds of friends and never
being fully included in either conversation. Or worse, being just out of reach
of all the shared plates of food. Seeing someone enjoy their third stuffed
mushroom when you haven’t had your first breeds a really ugly, potent brand of
anger that makes you hate yourself as much as that greedy, mushroom-hogging
bitch.

4. Figuring out the bill is a fucking
nightmare.

Let’s say all
went perfectly until now; everyone showed up five minutes early, beautiful new
friendships were budding between work friends and college friends, and everyone
got exactly the same number of spring rolls. Truly, a night to remember! Nope. Get
ready to hate everything, ’cause OH SHIT, here comes the bill.

Hopefully,
the host picked a restaurant that has mints at the door, because every guest,
regardless of how extravagantly they indulged or how little they consumed, will
leave a birthday dinner with a bad taste in their mouth. Every single person
will think they paid WAY too much for what just happened, and it’s pointless to
try to avoid it. A mere 19 hours after my above-mentioned 16-person BDFH
(birthday dinner from hell), I went to ANOTHER birthday dinner and very
deliberately (albeit, stupidly) split a $14 entrée, drank water, and avoided
the appetizers like they were poisoned. Really thought it was a foolproof plan, so openly depriving myself. THINK AGAIN! That one cost me just under $70.
For half an order of pad thai and water.

I get it. In
a group of 10 or more, the “Oh but I only
had…” people are almost as annoying as the ones who order the surf and turf
and four cocktails. Even on the extremely rare occasion when the bill is painstakingly
divided by item, there are always a few people who have, apparently, never been to a restaurant before and
aren’t familiar with the concept of tax and tip, turning the end of the night into
a totally not-fun game of “find the stingy ass.”

More often,
the take-charge person in the group gets out their phone calculator and divides
the bill evenly, sans birthday person (who, at this point, is doing their best
to awkwardly ignore the irritated, shocked faces of their friends). The
calculation still weirdly takes forever, and the announcement of how much each
person owes is decreed curtly, and without room for arguing.

Finally, of
course, you have to pay. As any server can confirm, it is a true joy to watch a
large group of people attempt to pay a restaurant bill. Really, the more the
better, what with the six or more credit cards and multiple requests for
change. By the end of the whole ordeal, everyone is salty, hungry again, and
anxious to leave.

Look, I
don’t think I’m a cheap ass, but I typically spend under $100 on a birthday
gift for my own mother. And this is San Francisco; your friends are going to
range from hella rich to hella poor, and the whole premise of these group dinners
makes things uncomfortable for everyone. It’s not that I think birthdays need
to be extravagant exercises in theme and creativity; I’m just saying there are
lots of things you could do on your birthday, and a huge dinner is one of the
worst. For less money and less hassle, everyone could pitch in and rent a suite
at a fancy hotel with a pool. Do that. Do anything else.